


Saving Graces

by Pfefferminztea



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pfefferminztea/pseuds/Pfefferminztea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mai really, really hates Valentine's day.<br/>Meanwhile, Tea and Joey really, really love torturing their girlfriend about being named after her least-favorite holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving Graces

**Author's Note:**

> I'm either really late to the Valentine's party or really early for next year.  
> There were some cute Valentine's posts about Mai and her awful dub name on tumblr this year, so I decided to write this, but didn't really get around to putting the finishing touches on it until now. Ah, well. 
> 
> As always, inspirational credit goes to my partner in copyshipping crime, [Kiwianna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiwianna/pseuds/Kiwianna), this time for reblogging polarshipping-Valentine's-cuteness and for this outfit   
>  
> 
> ([x](http://jien-chan.deviantart.com/art/YGO-Broken-553490264))
> 
> which makes a guest appearance here.

It always starts the same way: with breakfast in bed and glitter in her toothpaste. It doesn’t matter what Mai does to avoid this particularly gross and unpleasant prank – hide her toiletries, buy a new and unopened tube, yell and swear at the culprits – she always ends up with pink flecks of metal between her teeth.

How romantic.

Mai has always hated Valentine’s day. As a kid, it was probably just a way to feel closer to her mother, who, in Mai’s memory, never liked the holiday. (In retrospect, it’s hard to tell if it really was just a passing comment one year that led her to believe this. There aren’t many reliable memories she has from before her parents died.) Later on, it was definitely a defense mechanism against gross creeps and their lame, obvious ‘Mai Valentine’ jokes.

But even now, when she has not one, but two wonderful humans to share this supposedly romantic day with, she still hates it. Stupid, insincere, corporate pseudo-romance.

Not that any of these reasons can stop her girlfriend and boyfriend.

The year after they get together with Tea, she stupidly hopes for a reprieve from Joey’s sappy surprises. Surely, he wouldn’t shower her with gifts while leaving their girlfriend out of the ‘fun’. And surely, he doesn’t have the energy to prepare surprises for both of them.

What she doesn’t take into consideration are the joint forces of two people with almost a decade of shared experience in pranking their friends. She may have been partners with Joey the longest, but Tea and Joey were partners in crime long before that.

So each year after that, the Valentine’s madness just escalates.

Mai is never great at getting up in the morning, but on Valentine’s, it becomes a veritable obstacle course. When she opens her eyes, it’s usually not to the face of any of her partners – it’s to the empty stare of a fluffy pink stuffed animal holding a giant red heart. One year, it was vanilla scented. She doesn’t have anything against vanilla, but that stuff was still clinging to her after her shower.

When he was doing this alone, Joey would usually pick a recording of some cheesy love song to play while he served her breakfast in bed (the only part of this ordeal that she can honestly understand the appeal of).

Since Tea joined the party, the musical choices have gotten more ambitious. At first, she just made Joey learn whatever song they’d picked and played along on her guitar as the two of them serenaded Mai. Their rendition of ‘You’re my best friend’ was actually pretty damn impressive, although Mai wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it.

But ‘impressive’ is clearly not what the two of them are going for, unless it is ‘impressively ridiculous’. Otherwise, there really isn’t any explanation for why things had to take a turn for the weird when Anzu began re-writing song lyrics and invented a ballad to Mai’s harpies based on ‘Killing me softly’.

( _Strumming my pain with her claws, Singing my life with her words –_ Anzu may have gotten harpies confused with sirens. At this point, who cares.)

And of course, Joey, who always has his sources, got Tea some questionable, borderline-pornographic harpie-print tshirt to match his scapegoat boxers. (Another thing Mai won’t admit: she will complain out loud about the childishness of Joey’s weakness for Duel Monsters imagery, but it does still turn her on to see the two of them in those outfits.)

At first, she tried to reason, and hoped that at least Tea would have mercy on her. Maybe they could even have teamed up on Joey and gotten him to drop the whole thing.  
But no matter how many times she pleaded with them – ‘WHY are you guys still doing this? You know I hate it.’ – the answer was always the same.

‘It’s YOUR DAY, we have to celebrate that.’

In almost every way imaginable, Mai is very much her own woman. But if she ever does get married, there will be absolutely no question about her ditching her last name. Curse her parents for saddling her with that thing in the first place.

Afternoons are even worse than mornings on Valentine’s day. At least with the mornings, there is an established routine. The weird gifts and songs, the heart-shaped food. (It began with waffles and eggs. Now every year, Joey adds something new to the menu, with increasing creativity. This year, he made an entire cake which, when sliced, revealed a heart on the inside. Needless to say that for years now, they’ve been eating Valentine’s leftovers for days.)

In the afternoon, Mai never knows what to ready herself for. Sometimes they’ll fake an emergency to kidnap her and bring her to some fancy restaurant – which she would probably enjoy if it wasn’t for the barbershop quartets and comically blown-up cheesy couple’s photos that she doesn’t remind posing for. (He denies it, but Mai is 85% sure Tea got Kaiba to help with the photoshop part of that.)

Sometimes, they’ll plan a treasure hunt with embarrassingly personal (and sometimes inappropriate) questions. One year, they actually broke into a house while she was showing it to a client, set up a picknick in the wellness-area and forced her to play off the roses and champagne as ‘I just wanted you to get an idea of what you could do with the space.’

The only saving grace, after whatever embarrassing surprises Tea and Joey come up with for the day, is this:

It always starts the same way. And Mai really, really hates glitter, chocolate and heart-shaped objects on Valentine’s day. But any other day of the year, she has no problem coming up with all sorts of interesting uses for them. So for a day, she lets Joey and Tea have their fun. Because the day after that, she gets to have hers.

It always starts the same way, but it always ends the same, too.


End file.
